Harris Ignores Antiwar Voters at Her Peril
Harris can’t afford to blow off antiwar voters, especially not in Michigan, but she has decided to treat them as a nuisance instead of seeing them as an important constituency that she needs to win.
As Israel continues to bomb Lebanon, Harris faces a growing backlash in Michigan against her and the administration’s policy:
While discord between the Democratic Party and a community frustrated with the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war has persisted for months, party leaders believed they had made progress when Harris stepped in as the party’s nominee.
That goodwill is gone, said Arab American News Publisher Osama Siblani, an organizer of Wednesday’s event who has also met with top Democrats. He suggested Harris now finds herself in the same predicament that Biden faced before he stepped down.
“A couple of months ago you could have argued to the community that Harris is different. Now, people are not convinced that she is any different,” said Siblani.
Swapping out one candidate for another was never going to change anything here if there was no hint of a change in policy. When Biden dropped out and Harris became the Democratic candidate, there was an opening for her to win back at least some of the voters who were rightly horrified by our government’s enabling of war crimes and genocide. She repeatedly chose not to make an effort to do that. The backlash over Gaza and Lebanon may very well end up sinking her campaign because she failed to respond to what the voters have been demanding for the last year.
Harris could have pledged to follow the law and cut off arms transfers because of Israel’s blocking of humanitarian aid and its violations of international law. She could have at least become more openly critical of Israeli actions. The vice president did none of that.
If anything, Harris has been sounding more hardline as the general election draws nearer. Her recent statement on the death of Nasrallah echoed Biden’s in its complete disregard for the likely hundreds of civilian casualties slaughtered in the bombings on Friday. To judge from the way that the attack was covered and talked about in our media, the average American might not know that a large residential area was leveled in one of the most egregious war crimes ever committed in modern Lebanese history. It is common enough for American politicians to offer hollow words of sympathy in response to such attacks, but in this case Harris and Biden didn’t even bother to acknowledge that there were any civilian casualties.
When the Israeli government engages in massive escalation and massacres hundreds of noncombatants in the middle of a suburb, applause is obviously the wrong way to respond, but that is how Harris responded. She robotically said, “President Biden and I do not want to see conflict in the Middle East escalate into a broader regional war,” but once again she and Biden proved that they are not going to do anything to prevent that from happening. Never have her claims to support diplomacy rung more hollow.
It is remarkable that Harris has chosen to follow Biden’s example of stubbornly clinging to a bankrupt and immoral policy rather than heeding the wishes of an overwhelming majority of her own voters. The vice president seems to be operating on the assumption that there will be no real political cost to continuing to side with a government committing genocide. Whatever else happens, Harris has already proven that her foreign policy judgment is every bit as abysmal as Biden’s.
In addition to supporting a terrible policy for the United States and the region, Harris’ position is not very smart politics. Hundreds of thousands of voters in Michigan have direct connections to the places that Israel has been devastating for almost twelve months, and many of them have personal and familial ties to the people suffering under and dying from these relentless attacks. Harris has offered only the weakest lip service to their concerns and nothing more. There are millions of other voters around the country that share their disgust with U.S. policy, and some of us live in other important swing states that Harris can’t afford to lose. Harris can’t afford to blow off antiwar voters, especially not in Michigan, but she has decided to treat them as a nuisance instead of seeing them as an important constituency that she needs to win.
Harris has never had any interest in policy, and she is an incurious as W. Her entire political career has been based on a simple-minded and robotic tough-on-crime platform which required no thought at all. So don't expect her to care about or understand U.S. foreign policy, and don't expect her to change it. And whatever you do, don't expect her to speak intelligently on the matter or frankly any other matter of substance because she is a vacant moron who often appears to have a serious drinking or Xanax problem as she demonstrated yet again in her recent cringeworthy interview with Oprah.
I am completely confounded by Harris's massive ambition because it is devoid of substance. She has no interest in governing, yet she seeks to govern the planet. That such an empty vessel has risen so high is both a damning and profoundly embarrassing indictment of our political system.
I suspect that Harris is only interested in the prestige of high office which, incidentally, she has not received as VP. She actually complained to the West Wing that people do not automatically stand when she enters a room. Harris cared about that perceived slight enough to lodge a complaint which is more than she has done about Israel's mass murder campaign in Gaza.
Wasn’t it… “I’m speaking now”?
— Not in my name, Kamala, not in my name!